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The Tropical Rainforest Experience
Rick Dutra
Hi! I'm Rick
Dutra. When I'm not exploring Tropical
Rainforests, I teach high school Biology and
Environmental Science in
Haysville, Kansas
(just south of Wichita). I'm also working on my Master's degree in
Environmental Studies at Friends University.
I've always wanted
to go exploring in the 'jungle'. A friend at school gave me a mailing
he'd received about doing research in the Tropical
Rainforests of Costa Rica. There was
a website address, so I checked it out. I turned out that all I had
to do was fill out
and submit a simple
12 page application (the experience is more than worth it) and if I was
selected, the Woodrow
Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and
the National
Science Foundation would pay my expenses
to study and explore for three weeks in Costa Rica! What jungle explorer
wanna-be could pass up an opportunity like that? Not this one.
La Selva
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Our first research station was the world renowned Organization for Tropical Studies at La Selva. This reserve has primary and secondary forest areas. As my first exposure to rainforest, this seemed like a fantasy world. The diversity of plants and animals was almost overwhelming.
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My research group was interested in the ecology of the heliconia flowers. This flower has bracts that catch and hold rainwater. The water attracts organisms to live there . We wanted to find out if there was a difference in the diversity of organisms living in the haliconia bracts in primary and secondary forest. |
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The contrasts between La Selva and Palo Verde was striking. Palo Verde is tropical dry forest. There were black iguanas most everywhere you looked. |
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In Palo Verde we studied two different wetland areas. One received runoff from nearby rice paddys. The other was in a more natural state. We compared the grass species of the two. We also compared the biomass of each wetland. |
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